


apples to apples

by Summerlightning



Category: Wicked - All Media Types
Genre: Boredom, Friendship/Love, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:04:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summerlightning/pseuds/Summerlightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Elphie!  Let's do something."</p>
            </blockquote>





	apples to apples

\--

The room was a sanctum of almost-quiet.  The little tower clock in the corner ticked and clucked sometimes.  Elphaba turned pages more often, hunched over her desk with her javelin chin tucked nearly to her chest.  A dark sweater—black?  very very very brown?—bunched between her shoulders, too big, too old.  There were pills all over it.  Elphaba’s fingers went out on either side of her book like long green flowers.  Ugly flowers.  Knobby flowers.  Outside, the snow swirled down in pennants.

“I’m bored,” said Glinda.

“I’m unmoved,” said Elphaba, and turned another page.

_Tick-cluck_.  _Tick-cluck_.  The tower clock kept its count.  Glinda groaned and rolled onto her belly, her face in her pillow, her feet kicking.  Her stockings made scratchy stretching sounds but it was too cold to take them off.  Icicles were growing on the sill at the window and the embers in the fireplace smoldered a low, useless orange. 

“Elphie!  Let’s do something.”

Elphaba turned a page.  “I am doing something.”

“No, but, together.  Let’s do something together.”  Glinda sat up.  Elphaba spared her not even the barest glance.  Rude!

But:  “Like what?” she said, and marked her place in her book with her thumb. “The walkways are frozen, the streets no better.  And even if we could find a sledge for hire, most places are closed by now.” 

The floor was like ice.  Glinda stood anyway, jittering on the balls of her feet, unsteady in her stockings.  Now Elphaba looked at her.  Glinda said, “I never meant we had to go anywhere.”  She advanced.  When she made to rest her hands on Elphaba’s shoulders the green girl twitched away, badly startled, and Glinda made a show of pawing the air before she wound her fingers together and frowned.  “What are you reading?  Tell me about it.”

Surprise drew frost-etchings over Elphaba’s face.  “You really want to know?”

“Of course not.”  Glinda briskly swept a neat stack of papers to the back of her roommate’s desk.  She took its place the next moment.  “But I’d rather keep trying to amuse myself even less.  I’ve rearranged the contents of my vanity twice, both by shade and by color—”

“There’s a difference?”

“—oh.  Oh, dear, yes.”  Glinda gave the mystified girl a pitying pat.  She thus found Elphaba’s cheekbone sharp as an elm switch.  “A lesson for another time, though, that is.”  She repeated, “What are you reading?  You’re happy enough with it.  Be charitable and share, why don’t you, so I can be happy too?”

Elphaba’s mouth flattened.  Abrupt hostility lent her eyes a flinty, unpleasant spark.  “I don’t think there’s much we can both happily share,” she said.

Unimpressed, Glinda shrugged.  She swung her feet.  “Uh-huh.  Are you really that determined to stay green?”

The frail fire crackled.  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Elphaba demanded.  A muddy flush filled up the hollows under her eyes.  She closed her book and squared her shoulders, her brow clenched and thunderous, one hand an idle fist.

“You’re sour as new apples all the time,” said Glinda.  “Green, green, green!  Maybe if you stopped being that way you’d get sweeter.  And pinker,” she added, inspired.

Elphaba’s mouth opened and closed.  Her chest heaved.  The pills on her sweater trembled and a lump bobbed down the length of her throat.  (It had a long way to go.)  She snarled, “And why would I want to be pinker than I am already?”

Glinda blinked.  She answered, not in a manner she perceived as unkind, “Because everyone always wants to be like everybody else, Elphie.  Given your circumstances, I’d imagine getting pinker is nothing save your fondest wish.”

For a moment Elphaba regarded Glinda furiously.  When her chin wobbled she turned in her chair to regard the wall instead, bent a little.  The tower clock went _tick-cluck_.  The fire cracked again and Elphaba’s shoulders shook.

Glinda touched one.  She offered, unapologetic, “Sweet or sour, pink or green, someone’s bound to like you sometime.  Apples come in different colors.  And shades.  And metaphors are exhausting.  Will you stop crying and tell me about your book now?”

Smearing the sleeve of her horrible sweater over her eyes, Elphaba turned back around.  She sniffed without much conviction, “I hate pink.”

“Of course you do.”  Glinda scooted closer.  She leaned over Elphaba’s arm and reopened the book for her.  “Read on.”

Elphaba did.


End file.
